Johnny
2022 · 10m · USA
Directed by Danny Scharar
Genres: comedy, dark comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A romantic evening between colleagues opens as a parody of stilted date talk before pivoting hard into something far weirder. A peculiar secret hobby surfaces and the whole thing breaks open.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
I'm tired of competent first-date shorts. Scharar gets in, mocks the form, and detonates it — McCollister and Bensinger sell every absurd beat.
Scharar pulls a rom-com-parody-to-WTF handbrake turn anchored by McCollister and Bensinger — Quentin Dupieux first-date awkwardness with one inspired sight gag. The pivot is the structure.
Genre handbrake-turn from rom-com parody into WTF territory, anchored by a single inspired sight gag — that's the entire architecture, and McCollister + Bensinger have the commitment to sell it. Lives or dies on the gag, which the page coyly refuses to spoil.
Reviews
A WTF comedy that begins as a parody of boring date conversations and then becomes something very different, featuring committed performances and an inspired sight gag.